2247 – TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before Congress (full hearing)

On several accounts, this is probably one of the most interesting pieces of current politics as a spectacle I have seen recently. It is several hours long and it is really interesting to skip through, on several accounts that I want to detail below. It is basically an almost textbook example of double standards and also a way to see how Congress politicians (US) that would normally disagree on almost everything (Medicaid, immigrants, Green New Deal etc.) are agreeing on one thing: that the popular social platform TikTok cannot stay under Chinese ownership. That’s a strange form of nationalisation- something that is anathema for both US liberals and cons. Also, one cannot understand this sudden Tiktok phobia without previous measures taken to curtail reliance on Huawei infrastructure or the whole scare around G5, with the Chinese leading the new global technology standardisation measures. So here it is:

1. This hearing is an unexpected proof of the links between the Silicon Valley tech giants and NSS, an institutionalized relation that has been amply explored by Linda Weiss in American Inc.?. That amazing book from 2014 gives so much insight into the e U.S. innovation system. It ends on a warning note – a perceived un-productivity or inefficiency that has stifled innovation, a decline that has only accelerated these last years. This history of institutional bootstrapping that has grown out of the Cold War pursuits of technological supremacy and permanent defense preparedness in front of external threats – has produced a very successful combination indeed, yet it has stopped bringing in the expected results. This combination of geopolitical threats and domestic political constraints that has been such a catalyst for countless start-ups, for huge technological breakthroughs in robotics, space technologies, and nanotech, and that had this tip-toe coordinating role in the private-public relationships was starting to wobble and crack up. Financialized corporations are being regarded as stifling innovation and actually boycotting R&D in today’s world. Since about 1910s monopoly capitalism has been the name of the game, and huge corporations (big firms socialized by banks and stock markets) found themselves not in competition with other firms so much as with the growing power of trade unions. Responding to these pressures as well as Bolchevik fear mongering, Maynard Keynes opus called The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money basically (as Charles Mudede put in a recent post) basically advices and advocates for the transformation of the working class (mostly white) into white collar workers that defined the second half of the 20 century. Now that middle class has declined in the West and is mainly growing in China and India (and probably Africa in the future). According to others he didn’t stabilize capitalism as much as save a crumbling British Empire. Right-wing Keynesianism and military deficit spending may try to do just that for the American Empire but there’s other forces at work. BRICS (India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Russia) signals a change and willingness to avoid over-reliance on the dollar as an international currency reserve (and by extension the US Fed). What’s more fascinating than to see a world power that promoted free trade for decades turn into a “protectionist”?!
2. The fact that this TikTok hearing is not like the Facebook Zuckerberg hearing before Congress four years ago is also a sign of the times. There not only a premium of Congress to show off its patriotic alliegence and anti-China sentiment in public, but also a huge benefit to be reaped for Big Tech that has shown itself a national assett on the global stage. Everything is allowed on the global hegemony stage, even kamikaze gestures like fucking up the careers of scientists that have previously worked for you, and are now considered unreliable or potentially a liability in the new climate of China Initiative launched by the Trump government in 2018 and continued under Biden.
3. Another thing that comes across from various reactions and comments and online memes produced after the hearing (from the Sinosphere as well) is that it is all a witch hunt. The majority of proof brought by the Congress was frankly laughable. This hearing has been really working against the intentions of the Congress, and actually gained support and even celebrity status for the relatively unknown Shou Zi Chow, a citizen of Singapore not mainland China.
4. What is again quite clear is that politicians (US and elsewhere, with the exception of China maybe) are completely at the mercy of technologies that they do not care to understand, regulate or mitigate. They are basically (as one friend put it) surfing platforms that are managed by their campaign managers or specialists, while they live in a sort of blissful ignorance. It is very clear that they do not care to understand what these platforms are about, as long as they can reap benefits or if they think that the surveillance, misinformation and addictive-behavior-inducing apps at home is provided by what they consider American-patriotic platforms. Also, Red Scare is apparently not a bygone thing, and everything can be mobilized in the new Cold War. It basically made them look both ridiculously united and also completely out of their milieu in terms of the Internet and social media.
5. The increasing sensation that TikTok has somehow gamed the algo capitalist economy and has suddenly offered or at least intensified things in a new direction. As my friend Cristian Dragan and Ion D sez (both have taken to exploring TikTok new hybrids), the platform seems to create overnight popularity, turbo-charging popularity sky-high like nothing seen before (with the likes of Insta or FB) and also allow a much higher degree of horizontal shuffling or at least a combination of otherwise invisible content (from countryside location, to menial jobs, to the city to areas considered completely isolated). This comes with a greater susceptibility to vibes and to hybridization of styles visual or musical.

Bruh, I don't recommend watching any of the TikTok Congress hearing.

It shows how technologically behind our governmental officials are.

Peep this fucking dude.

My pupils are so fucking dilated right now bruv. pic.twitter.com/zPfVtq0KC9

— AMadamWebuss (@AplatypussTV) March 23, 2023

2238 – A future with quantum biology – with Alexandra Olaya-Castro (lecture 2023 Royal Institution)

“Scientific and technological advances have enabled us to zoom into the biological world. We can get down to the biomolecular scale, a domain where quantum phenomena can take place and therefore cannot be neglected.”

I think that whoever said photosynthesis is all known, been there done that, does not have a clue about how recent our understanding of such an important biological process has gained from zooming in and peering into happenings at smaller and smaller (picosecond, femtosecond) intervals. Suffice it to say that processes happening on this scale have to be scaled up or slowed down in order for us to even be able to acknowledge they exist since they completely overstep our own sensation of a specious present. It is highly ironic that some of the most efficient and most ancient energy uses happen on levels that are just now being explored or approached. It is this clean energy and high efficiency that escapes us and we are very far from trying to mimic it in a lab environment. Harnessing each moment the energy from our nearest star is much more complicated than we think even if it appears all-natural, all happening at once and without much thought. This molecular (and quantum) complexity is mind-boggling and also merits the effort of listening attentively because it comes from somebody trying hard to take us on a trip riding on a photon.

2236 – Magic and Science with Erik Davis on New Thinking Allowed (2023)

In order to get over the biographical and personal – I must confess that having Erik Davis as an untiring and generous guide through High Weirdness, esoterica, (techno)occulture, psychedelia, Californian counterculture, Cyberdellia, the 1970s – has helped me get around my late 80s Golden Bough or the 1990s brush with Noua Acropola (Theosophy), Mircea Eliade’s books on shamanism, or his Treaty on the History of Religions and Gilbert Durand’s Les Structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, both published by Humanitas. I was never sure if I would ever be interested in that influx of paranormal and esoterica or how to qualify it. Interestingly on the continuum of the physical-mental pole (as Whitehead would say) – there was rationalism, Darwinism, and atheism through the thinking of Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins (yes!), Edward O. Wilson, Jared Diamond (more lastingly than the others) – Stephen Jay Gould. It has not been a tug of war, or a contest although ultimately the political stakes have been more important – the way conspirituality and post-truth has taken over and divided societies or the way the New Atheists have been somehow preparing the MRM or alt-right is part of this history. Rationality and anti-rationality have been always contested grounds – and recent text by John Bellamy Foster: the New Irrationalism IHMHO I can agree with in general, but at the same time cannot get over the feeling that it builds the same strawmen arguments as those hurled at so-called “cultural marxism” by the right-wingers. Another argument I have with John Bellamy Foster’s recent text is my doubt that pessimism and existential nihilism could be a catchall for what ails the current moment – while we could very well admit that untrammeled irrational (US-birthed) “positive thinking” made our situation direr than ever.

Never thought these two tendencies relevant, trying to see how they square off. How the unreason of witch-hunting atheism might end up locked in battle with some kind of spiritualist nativist revival, while it might have more in common with transphobic cishet religiosity. On my side it would be foolish to deny the importance of this background radiation (and I have at least been acknowledging this during a beer rant with a good friend in Timisoara). At the same time, I wish Erik Davis would have been there too. Even if I don’t find his interest in life after death, techno gnosticism, spiritualism, or astrology – as exciting as he does, I still think it important to keep track of conspiracies, dualism, of discarded beliefs at a time of scientific triumphalism, or revisit our metaphysical presuppositions, keep learning from the “sociology of science” when one discusses the most recent Silicon Valley fads (simulation theory) or crypto NFT based longevity seeking tech. I also appreciate his critical sensibility – the way he’s decrying the ideological fervor of Wikipedia editors, while at the same time recognizing how religious traditionalistic values are becoming untied from organized religion to weaponize the new right consensus that is quite irreligious. I also think he is bringing a more culturally aware understanding and historicity to a generally ahistorical scientific culture, finding plurality at paradigmatic turning points (such as Kepler’s indulgence with Plantonic forms) or recognition for the role fringe culture played as visionary avant-garde popularizing goofy, previously minoritarian views or mad ideas, that in the meantime have become quite accepted, bland and easily embraced by the ‘normies’.

It is really telling indeed that Bell’s Theorem (the three experimental tests of Bell’s inequalities) – and indeed how quantum entanglement and quantum information theory ceased to be SF. FTL has been abandoned, no magical spooky action at a distance – but strong correlations have has domesticated entanglement, making it less spectacular (that is the role of science!) and has been applied in cryptography and communication – areas where non-locality helped out. What Davis make clear that would have sounded like heresy or lacking any respectability 20 or 30 years ago (say panpsychism )- has garnered the right of being debatable and even scientifically probable, radiating in as many flavors and combinations. The same has happened with the spillover from the SF nerd/geek ghetto into the larger oceans of mass culture making some fairly undigestible and outlandish ideas gain traction, just because big-screen SF popularized them, got them across under the pen of atheist authors (and VC funding!), making them palatable to a less and less religious world.

With this philosophical and even newly earned scientific respectability, there comes a time to recognize the way (Erik D is good at this!) Consciousness Culture has been doing much of the groundwork for this slow acceptance of the neurodivergent and non-human minds. Ultimately I like Davis’s attraction for “naturalism” in all matters. For me any type of naturalism (or multinaturalism) is quite healthy and goes a long way, from (even non-Western) pre-scientific thinking, including forgotten philosophical inquiries by the German idealists and the experimentalism of Naturphilosophy (Schelling, Hegel, Fichte etc) to today’s speculative realists. I also appreciate all these discussion that circumvent the usual post-digital or cyber studies pitfalls or full automation fears about robotics and focus instead on how robotic one is AFTER mindful de-programming, or how mechanistic and bureaucratic some of the gaming experiences truly are as one keeps playing, or how even after awakening (or joining a cult!) one starts acting ever more routinized, almost like a remote “observer” exhibiting a more robotic self than ever before. In one word – highly recommended for a weekend hearing!

2233 – Christopher Wren’s Cosmos, a lecture by Katherine Blundell at David Game College (2023)

A remarkable trip to the universe of what was to become the Royal Society. A few cursory notes -are how diverse the preoccupations at the time were, and how studying Saturn went very well with studying or perfecting ways to better draw and analyze fleas and flies. The microcosms were in many ways much closer and more accessible than the macrocosmos – and at the time all optics and telescopes were so poor as to make optical aberrations, errors, and mistakes unavoidable. The universe itself was quite small, and distances were not properly understood, still C. Wren had tremendous fun trying to figure out the surface of the moon and make a model of it. Another example was the temper and gracious nature of Wren – who compared with many other researchers, then and now, was very uninterested in tying his name to a discovery or really an influencer that did not strive to be an influencer.

A very good introduction to the history of astronomy, ethics in science, and the pleasure of discovery, even when one does not have the proper tools or the best of conditions.

2213 – Everybody in the Place (2019 documentary)

Originally aired on BBC Four 2nd August 2019 – documentary by Jeremy Deller.

Acid house is often portrayed as a movement that came out of the blue, inspired by little more than a handful of London-based DJs discovering ecstasy on a 1987 holiday to Ibiza. In truth, the explosion of acid house and rave in the UK was a reaction to a much wider and deeper set of fault lines in British culture, stretching from the heart of the city to the furthest reaches of the countryside, cutting across previously impregnable boundaries of class, identity and geography.

With Everybody in the Place, the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller upturns popular notions of rave and acid house, situating them at the very centre of the seismic social changes that reshaped 1980s Britain. Rare and unseen archive materials map the journey from protest movements to abandoned warehouse raves, the white heat of industry bleeding into the chaotic release of the dancefloor.

We join an A-level politics class as they discover these stories for the first time, viewing the story of acid house from the perspective of a generation for whom it is already ancient history. We see how rave culture owes as much to the Battle of Orgreave and the underground gay clubs of Chicago as it does to shifts in musical style: not merely a cultural gesture, but the fulcrum for a generational shift in British identity, linking industrial histories and radical action to the wider expanses of a post-industrial future.

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2187 – #AfterExtractivism Berliner Gazette 2022 (video talks)

In today’s world of broken tech/content cultural cycles where oligarchic, tech billionaire or strongmen rule, unchecked megalomania and institutionalized greed tends express itself nowadays as “concern” about freedom or fighting against PC and censorship but ends in layoffs and users migrating from one temporary heaven to another. It is as Ada Palmer put – getting meta, a place where one used to tweet about various meltdowns – Twitter – is itself tweeting about its own meltdown. Well TW was itself stuck in the verbal and textual (if minute and 200 character limit) turn. People move to Mastodon and this is not something that should surprise us.

There is even talk about returning to Tumblr and who knows, maybe a renewed interest in worn-out formats such as WordPress. With that in mind I will post a few short talks on various subjects related to green transitions from fossil fuel as East /West manifold, climate justice, the Capitalocene, resource depletion and greenwashing from the #AfterExtractivism series an appendage to the Berliner Gazette. I participated with an article and a video in one on these, but I urge you to check the others too – they are dense, interesting and quite urgent. They range I said from the history of empires, system of sacrificial (based on human sacrifice) economy – of vegetal greases in the Atlantic Slave trade and British Industrial and Colonial history or today’s infamous petro-states of the Gulf and their futuristic imagery. They are quite short, ~ 10 minutes to 18, and quite to the point, so they might be worth your while, even if it’s talking heads – a situation I also often find annoying.

More info: after-extractivism.berlinergazette.de

Stefan Tiron 1989 / 2147

Connecting post-1989 worker struggles in Romania’s coal mining region with Captain Power and a group of guerrilla fighters who oppose the machine forces that dominate Earth in the 22nd century following the so-called Metal Wars, artist, author, and curator Stefan Tiron inquires in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism” into the political potential of science fictional transitioning in the 1990s.

Max Haiven · Palm Oil

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a global shortage of sunflower oil, propelling palm oil to rise again, a critical look at the global history of the palm oil industry reveals both the imperial violence of extractive capitalism as a system of human sacrifice and the challenges for a transition into a just world, social thinker Max Haiven argues in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”

Stoyo Tetevenski · European Green Deal

The case of Bulgaria reveals: what is sold as the ultimate way out – namely, the “green” transition – opens new spaces for accumulation. The cost of this is to be borne by society, especially by workers in old industries. Thus, the challenge is to advance post-capitalism, as environmental justice activist Stoyo Tetevenski argues in his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”

Manuela Zechner · Earthcare

While ecological and economic systems are collapsing, a battle for white supremacy is raging; it is not least a class war for (controlling) access to the shrinking living space on the planet. It is high time to counter this development with a radical politics of earthcare, as feminist researcher, facilitator, and artist Manuela Zechner

Katarina Kusic · The Yugoslavia Lesson

The suffering caused by extractive capitalism has people looking back to Yugoslavia’s modernization project. While aiming to dominate nature, it also created cooperative platforms for social togetherness, enabling sustainable ways of living and organizing economy.

Julio Linares · Climate and Debt

Fighting for debt cancellation and environmental justice in the Global South, the question is how we can wager our future on the legacies and claims of those who – then as now – have been plunged into existential hardship by the ecological-economic complex. In his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism,” economic anthropologist Julio Linares is looking for answers in Latin America.

Özgün Eylül İşcen · Gulf Futurism

After the Gulf boom propelled the growth both of the region and of oil-devouring economies in the West, new realms of capitalist expansion are being developed along the lines of green capitalism’s smartness mandate, ultimately reproducing the lasting systemic crisis of which Dubai is somewhat representative, media theoretician Özgün Eylül İşcen argues in her contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism.”

2143

truth is a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. the task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality. (rs)